Quinn has now posted detailed excerpts from 4chan members’ IRC logs that make their intentions to carry out a false-flag operation, and manufacture a controversy about “ethics in game journalism” out of thin air, crystal-clear. The people making sockpuppet accounts to post what they think are convincing simulacra of feminist thought aren’t concerned about ethics; they’re not even sympathetic with Quinn’s hapless ex. No, they simply have a vendetta against “social justice warriors” (I guess they think that term is an insult?)

You can follow links to read many more details. I’d like to highlight one thing, though. Normally, we don’t publish rejected comments on this blog — sort of by definition — but most comments this blog receives never see the light of day, whether they’re nonsense spam, indiscriminate proposals for posts on the most faintly on-topic issues, trolling, or outright hate. I’ll make one exception, though. This comment sat in the pending queue for a while before it was deleted:

This is a comment that was deleted before it appeared on the blog. Wow, are we glad.

As far as I can tell (people who are sufficiently dull, sheltered, or both to think that fighting against social justice is the best thing they can do with their clearly-copious free time), 4chan trolls planned to manipulate the Fine Young Capitalists to provide publicity for their hate campaign. I was already suspicious, when I saw the initial comment, of a group purporting to help women in games that has a spokesperson with a traditionally masculine first name; more suspicious by not seeing obvious credit given to any women who were also collaborating with the organization. I thought it might be innocent, though. And now, I see that it was — but that it could well have been preparation for some not-so-innocent manipulation.

(By the way, I didn’t think to whois the IP address until just now. Turns out it’s a public Toronto Public Library terminal. That probably would have raised a red flag for me as well — usually, representatives of nonprofits that are on the up and up don’t need to hide their identities by using a public library computer.)

I think the moral of the story, for people who moderate blog comments, is to be careful and seek second (and third) opinions. It’s natural to want to err on the side of not dismissing somebody as a troll when they actually have a genuine issue that you don’t know much about. But sometimes, when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it really is a member of Anas platyrhynchos.

“If I Can’t Have a Hugo Fan Award, Then No One Can!”: “This campaign to dismantle the Hugo Fan Awards lest they fall into enemy fans is not just toxic, selfish and reprehensible, it is an attempt to slam the doors of fandom shut in the face of yet another generation of passionate and devoted fans.”

Sexual Harassment Conversations, in Comic Form: Jim C. Hines hits the nail on the head with the responses women receive when reporting (or not reporting) sexual harassment [Warning: the comments contain exactly the apologia the comic is mocking]

My experience with game industry hiring: “The final answer was that culture matters most and I didn’t fit into their culture. What would that culture be, if not being a gamer, technically-inclined, and caring about their company’s products or audience. Looking around the room, it seemed that fitting into that Kulture they were talking about would mean being white and male.”

Sorry, Mario Bros!: … but Princess Toadstool can rescue herself. “The game spans three of Super Mario Bros’ original levels, this time from right to left, as the Princess jumps, stomps, floats, and warps her way from the dark castle dungeon up to the bright and wonderful Mushroom Kingdom, proving that female protagonists can be just as awesome as male protagonists.”

Debunking the ‘gender brain’ myth: ” ‘In the majority of cases, the differences between the sexes are either non-existent or they are so small so as to be of no practical importance in, for example, an educational setting’ “

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Can Videogames Teach Us About Race? “The conversation has moved beyond simply arguing for less revealing clothing and “more agency” for fictional women, towards dissecting a paradigm shift for the entire industry, highlighting the role of women as both consumers and producers of videogames. And while anyone at least casually interested in social equity will no doubt find this thrilling, the conversation is overwhelmingly white, with all these calls for industry-wide changes in favor of equal representation completely omitting race.”

30 Days Of Sexism: “From March 7 – April 7, I documented everything blatantly sexist anyone has said to me. None of these comments were provoked, none of them were replies to something I said, none of them were at all out of the ordinary and the vast majority of them (an original count of 77 images) have been taken out so that this post isn’t as long as it probably should be. This is a 10-picture indication of what it’s like to be a woman who endorses game culture, every single month.”

This Is What The Next Generation Of Programmers Looks Like: “As sophomores in high school, none of the girls have made a decision about whether or not they want to pursue computer science careers. But if app building appears as accessible to others of their generation as it does to them, the future of programming looks very bright.”

17 year old girl wins hackathon: “Let’s focus on how one teenage girl, Jennie Lamere, defeated a room full of smart, motivated, experienced, full-grown men. This would seem to be instructive to the greater argument about women in technology, and besides, it has the added bonus of being based in fact rather than opinion.”

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Asperger’s study asks: Are hackers cognitively different? | Security & Privacy – CNET News : “The researchers observed that 9 percent of attendees identified as female, yet their survey distribution focused on female attendees (and followed a strict gender binary) to place respondents’ gender ratio to a nearly even skew with 49 percent male respondents and 51 percent female. … When asked if they felt there was equal opportunity for women and other visible minorities in both work and hacker culture, 79 percent of the males said yes — while 38 percent of the women agreed.”

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

This is intended as an open thread, where you can talk not only about sexist gamer dudes “who still think that sandwich joke is funny” but also any older stories for which the comments are now closed, or you can bring up new stuff you think we should know about.